The Wasps

Description

Philocleon loves jury pay and Cleon; his son Bdelycleon tries to lock him in. Hear Aristophanes’ The Wasps unabridged in English: a house under siege by old jurors in wasp-costume, then a kitchen trial of the dog Labes for stealing cheese. Listen to Athens’s law-courts as addiction and farce. Spoken civic satire — gullible judges, a demagogue’s pets, a father who cannot stop convicting. The ear catches slapstick and the sting in the chorus. Generational war as noise. A comedy of justice heard as a habit that will not go quietly to bed. The old man drunk at a symposium, dancing when he was meant to be cured, Cleon still the offstage itch. Hear father and son as a civic disease with jokes. Jury-addiction as a beat you can clap to, then a hangover.